4. From Amateur to Entry and “Big Daddy” Bob McGill

The NHL draft only really began to take its modern form in 1980. In 1979, it was renamed the NHL Entry Draft, removing the amateur tag so that NHL clubs, after the WHA had ceased operations, could take players who’d previously played professionally. In 1980, the age criteria became what it is today, allowing NHL teams to draft North American–born players between the ages of 18 and 20 and European players between the ages of 18 and 21. The 1980 NHL Entry Draft also took the draft public, moving it from Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel (and briefly its Mount Royal Hotel in 1973 and the NHL’s Montreal offices from 1974 to ’77) into the Montreal Forum.

The Leafs arrived in Montreal after capping off a tumultuous season with a losing record and a three-game sweep to the Minnesota North Stars in the first round of the playoffs. They were also without their first-round pick, which had been traded in March 1978 along with Errol Thompson and a 1978 second-round pick for Dan Maloney and Detroit’s 1980 second rounder. The Red Wings used the Leafs’ first-round pick, which was the 11th overall selection, on Mike Blaisdell, who went on to play 343 NHL games. The Leafs made their first selection of the 1980 draft with Detroit’s second round pick at 25th overall, selecting Craig Muni, who played just 19 games for Toronto but went on to play 800 more for six other organizations, winning three Stanley Cups with the Oilers.

Nearby Muni in the crowd sat Bob McGill, a kid from Leduc, Alberta, just outside of Edmonton.

McGill had spent the previous season as a rookie in the WHL with the Victoria Cougars. He didn’t even know it was his draft year until he went home at Christmas and got a phone call from a family friend.

“You’re ranked by NHL Central Scouting for the draft,” he was told.

“What are you talking about?” he answered, unaware that 1980 was the first 18-year-old draft.

McGill, a defenceman who played the 1978–79 season for the Abbotsford Flyers in the Junior A BCJHL, quickly became one of the WHL’s toughest players, racking up 230 penalty minutes and 21 points in 70 games, helping to lead the Cougars to a WHL finals defeat.

He had travelled to the draft alone and was only in attendance because several of his Cougars teammates—including Barry Pederson, Brad Palmer, Len Dawes, Tony Feltrin, Torrie Robertson, and Bob Jansch—were also expected to be picked, and because his agent, Norman Caplan, was a giant in the sport who’d made arrangements for him. (Caplan represented more than a quarter of the league’s players before he passed away of a heart attack four years later at age 40.) With Caplan’s help, McGill and his Cougars teammates got rooms for the weekend of June 11 at the same hotel where legendary boxer “Sugar” Ray Leonard was staying in advance of his June 20 welterweight “The Brawl in Montreal” title fight against Roberto Duran at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. (Leonard’s handler even gave them T-shirts when they bumped into him in the lobby.)

In the days before the draft, McGill met with a few teams for some informal interviews. But by the time it started, and he’d taken his seat in his suit to wait, he didn’t have a clue when he would be picked and felt out of his element.

“I knew nothing about the NHL draft. I didn’t know a damn thing,” McGill said. “I mean, shit, I had just turned 18 in April, so I’m only a couple of months after my 18th birthday. It was kind of a whirlwind.”

Palmer’s name was the first of the Cougars to be called when the North Stars took him with the 16th pick. Pederson was selected two spots later by the Bruins.

Then, after watching Muni stand up and make his way down to the draft floor to meet with the Leafs, the Capitals were supposed to be up next when a timeout was called. After a few minutes, the silence was interrupted and four of the draft’s familiar words were spoken: “There’s been a trade.”

The Leafs had made a move, acquiring the Capitals’ 26th overall pick, prospect Tim Coulis (who never played a game in Toronto), and defencemen Robert Picard (Washington’s 1977 third overall pick, who was coming off of back-to-back 50-plus point seasons) for goalie Mike Palmateer and the 55th pick.

Immediately after taking Muni, the Leafs then used their second selection in a row on McGill—much to his surprise, because they weren’t one of the teams he’d interviewed with in advance.

After a few short minutes, Leafs assistant to the general manager Gord Stellick then tracked McGill down in the crowd, leading him through the stands to the Leafs’ draft table, where he met owner Harold Ballard, general manager Gerry McNamara, and the team’s scouts for the first time. The Leafs didn’t hand out sweaters at the time, but they gave him a hat and shook his hand, welcoming him to the team.

The following year, McGill returned to Victoria for a second season, posting 41 points and a team-high 295 penalty minutes in 66 games. He closed his junior career winning the WHL title the team had fallen just short of a year earlier.

A few months after that championship, a 19-year-old McGill couldn’t believe it when he made the Leafs out of training camp, referring to that era in the organization’s history as “a strange time.” In Toronto, he was one of three teenagers to crack the blue line, along with 18-year-old Jim Benning (whom the Leafs had taken sixth overall that summer and went on to become an NHL scout and executive with the Ducks, Sabres, Bruins, and Canucks), and 19-year-old Fred Boimistruck (who was taken in the third round of the 1980 draft, 16 picks after McGill).

“It was like, ‘Come on, who does this?’” McGill said of the Leafs’ decision to play three teenage rookies on their blue line. “And we weren’t a good team…”

McGill carved out a different niche than Benning and Boimistruck, becoming the Leafs’ tough guy. In November of McGill’s first season in 1981–82, in the midst of a skid during which the Leafs won just five of their first 23 games, captain Darryl Sittler waived his no-trade clause so that he could be dealt to the Philadelphia Flyers. The Leafs again finished near the bottom of the standings, winning 20 of 80 games for the third-worst record in the league. McGill played 66 of those games, finishing ninth in the league in penalty minutes with 263 (a Leafs rookie record to this day).

McGill went on to play six seasons for the Leafs from 1981 to 1987 in one of the franchise’s darkest chapters. After sticking with the Leafs for the entirety of his rookie season, he was demoted to the team’s AHL affiliate, the St. Catharines Saints, at Christmas of his second season, remaining there until a call-up after the trade deadline in his third year.

In St. Catharines, McGill joined Boimistruck, who’d been demoted just before he had in November 1982.

There he earned his nickname “Big Daddy” Bob McGill, which stuck with him for the remainder of his career and into his life after it. The nickname was given to him by Saints teammate Marc Magnan, a fellow tough guy out of Western Canada who was a 10th-round pick of the Leafs in 1981 and who had gone toe-to-toe with McGill in the WHL. Magnan was reading a book on “Big Daddy” Gene Lipscomb, who was said to be the toughest player to ever play in the NFL at the time, and one night, after McGill had dropped the gloves in the final minutes of a period (which meant that he was sent to the dressing room instead of the penalty box), Magnan sprinted into the room at intermission shouting the same three words over and over again.

“Big Daddy McGill! Big Daddy McGill!” Magnan screamed to laughs from his teammates.

When Magnan made a habit of shouting that every time he passed by McGill at the rink…or whenever he did well in a fight…or any time he entered the room or the team bus, it stuck.

McGill returned full-time to the Leafs in 1984 and remained in the NHL for another decade, playing more than 700 games and finishing his career with a combined 1,854 penalty minutes between the regular season and the playoffs.

He was traded to the Blackhawks on September 3, 1987, along with former Leafs captain Rick Vaive and Steve Thomas for star forward Eddie Olczyk (Chicago’s third overall selection in the 1984 draft) and veteran winger Al Secord.

McGill’s selection by the Leafs in the second round of the 1980 draft wasn’t his only draft experience. When the NHL expanded in 1991 and 1992, he was drafted twice in its expansion drafts, first by the San Jose Sharks (who traded him to the Red Wings) and then a year later by the Tampa Bay Lightning. After a contract dispute with the Lightning, McGill asked for his release in the fall of 1992 and returned to the Leafs for one season before retiring a couple years later.

In retirement, McGill briefly pursued coaching, serving as an assistant in the AHL with the Hershey Bears for two seasons (where he won the 1997 Calder Cup), the head coach of the ECHL’s Baton Rouge Kingfish for two seasons, and the head coach of the OHL’s Oshawa Generals for one campaign. He also worked eight years as a scout for the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings, his hometown team.

Today’s Leafs fan probably knows “Big Daddy” Bob McGill best for his appearances at community events, all the times he has laced up his skates in Leafs alumni and charity games, and his roles as the team’s longtime colour commentator for Toronto Marlies games and analyst with the Leafs Nation Network (formerly Leafs TV). He was hired by the TV arm of the franchise in 2005 and stayed with them until he decided to take a step back and slow down in 2021.

After fighting nearly 150 times in the NHL, McGill faced his toughest fight on May 31, 2017. He was at his cottage just outside of Peterborough, Ontario, when his wife Mary recognized that something wasn’t right with him, racing him 3 kilometres to the end of the road—and to cell service—to call 911. They met an ambulance halfway to the Peterborough Regional Health Centre, the nearest hospital, and learned that he had suffered a stroke. He suffered a second stroke in hospital, both of which were linked to a blood clot, and the latter impaired his speech.

He spent the summer of 2017 working to get back to himself through daily rehab. In September, as the Leafs and Marlies returned for their training camp, he returned to work—and the broadcast booth—insistent on keeping his life “business as usual.”

“I think that doing the hockey stuff was pretty helpful in keeping my mind sharp and working because of having to go over statistics and do different things to keep your brain working,” McGill said. “At the end of the day, I think I’ve pretty much made a full recovery. Touch wood. I’ve got lots of living left to do yet. I have to give props to my wife, Mary. She said, ‘We’re getting in the car and we’re going to the hospital.’ I think that I’m very fortunate that we got to the hospital when we did.”

In 2018, a year after his strokes, McGill and his mom, Kay, who was the first woman to head the Leduc Minor Hockey Association in 1977, were inducted into Leduc’s Sports Hall of Fame.

When he looks back on his career, he sighs, remembering how differently things turned out for him than they did for Boimistruck and pointing to how fickle NHL careers really are, even for two kids who were picked one after the other, started their lives together with the Leafs at the same age, and were demoted a month apart.

“I got called up and stayed in the NHL pretty much the rest of my career. But Freddie never recovered from it. He never played another game of hockey in the NHL again. He played a third year and then he was done. It’s crazy how things turn out,” McGill said.

Through his role with the Leafs’ broadcast team, and specifically the Marlies, he also watched firsthand as the draft process and the young players entering their own pro careers both changed.

“When you look at the way things have changed today and the whole production of what goes on at the draft, it’s so, so different,” McGill said. “The whole draft process leading up to it now with the combine, it has become way more scientific as far as the teams are concerned with how they go about researching the players. And the kids today are so well prepared. When you have a conversation with them, the agents have schooled these kids and taught them what to say so much that it’s almost robotic.”

The day itself hasn’t changed, though. The handshake introductions, the hat, the butterflies, and that out-of-your-element feeling? McGill’s certain that’s the same.

“At the end of the day, it’s a pretty special day in your life. It’s something that you’ll never forget,” McGill said. “Having your name called by an NHL team, and especially the Leafs, there’s nothing like it.”